Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands…. Psalm 90:17a

One of the most helpful mothering tools I have is to remember this fact: life is so brief. The time we have with our children is very short. Do I want to waste that time being snippy or wishing I could “just get a break”? No. I dread wasting it. What I pour into my children will affect not only them. It will affect generations to come. This is a sobering thought. I need much mercy from God for this task.

And, I do need short breaks occasionally to help me regroup to be purposeful with my life. Thanks to Andrew and to my mentor, Mary, I had a night away this last weekend at Mary’s house. I prayed about my priorities and planned a better schedule for engaging my children and husband. It is easy to slide into a “get through the day” mentality without having vision about what I’m doing. Retreats like this weekend are great to regain vision for my calling as a wham. Even if you do not have a husband or children, a planning retreat can be a helpful way to regain perspective about your priorities.

Sometimes meal planning is the bane of my WHAM existence. It’s hard for me to get a plan and stick with it. Also, I tend to be spontaneous, so “planning” isn’t exactly my forte. However, I have found the following site to be nice from time to time. It provides a weekly meal plan and grocery list for free. The recipes are not gourmet… and I don’t recommend the Tater Tot casserole, but on a whole it’s a nice break from the meal planning task.

.…as in, “Are you outside your mind?” I often feel that I am outside my mind when trying to get my two small children out the door and secured in the car. It is also possible that I am outside my mind for starting another blog. Nevertheless, I have not been able to shake this constant desire I have to share resources about wife-ing, mothering and homemaking with the people who read our family blog. In order to keep that blog simply family, I am starting a separate one to address the beautiful work of a WHAM (you guessed it… wife, homemaker, mom).